The Lions Operating System

(lionsos.org)

148 points | by plunderer 13 hours ago ago

35 comments

  • fithisux 3 minutes ago ago

    Aussies were supposed to progress with Darbat.

    It never happened.

  • cjs_ac 13 hours ago ago

    Presumably named after Associate Professor John Lions[0], of A Commentary on the UNIX Operating System[1] fame.

    [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lions

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Commentary_on_the_UNIX_Opera...

    • woolion 10 hours ago ago

      The mascot it super cute lion too. How can a project do everything so right? I was browsing some popular python libraries and they just slapped on the first image they got out of ChatGPT. It's nice to see care in the craft.

    • mlinksva 12 hours ago ago
    • santoshalper 12 hours ago ago

      It's developed by UNSW Sydney, whose mascot is a Lion. (Specifically, "Clancy the Lion"), so I am guessing it's probably that.

      • kragen 9 hours ago ago

        That's also where John Lions taught.

      • imvetri 4 hours ago ago

        What does mascot mean

        • saithound 3 hours ago ago

          A mascot is an animal figure that represents a product or sports team. For example, the penguin named Tux is the mascot of Linux, and the mascot for the Brisbane Broncos rugby team is the horse named Buck the Bronco.

          Mascot is, unrelatedly, also a suburb of Sydney.

    • snvzz 8 hours ago ago

      Not presumably, but explicitly. Both in documentation and presentations by seL4 they consistently make a point to mention so.

    • mzs 10 hours ago ago

      aka the Lions book

  • spencerflem 13 hours ago ago

    Very cool! I’m a huge fan of Genode, another OS that runs on SeL4. Does anyone here know how they compare?

    • panick21_ 10 hours ago ago

      Genode is a framework that can run on many places and on higher level has its own abstractions. Lion OS is based on Microkit the framework developed by the seL4 people that will also be verified. So Lion OS/Microkit is basically the outgrowth of the original seL4 research.

    • Y_Y 10 hours ago ago

      Unequal

  • snvzz 9 hours ago ago

    On recent news, LionsOS, as of about a week ago (I got notified via their announcement maillist), includes a router/firewall scenario[0].

    Do not miss Gernot Heiser's recent talk[1] at the seL4 Summit, where among other things he shows seL4 massively outperforming Linux in a web server scenario.

    0. https://lionsos.org/docs/examples/firewall/

    1. https://youtu.be/wP48V34lDhk

  • amelius 8 hours ago ago

    Mountain Lion is calling and wants its name back.

  • hulitu 10 hours ago ago

    > To be successful, many more components are needed.

    What is the purpose of this OS ? Can it mint Bitcoin ? Can it do fluid dynamics simulation ? Can it act as an interface to a database ? Can it host a database ? Is it interactive ? What kind of interface it presents to the user ?

    • oytis 34 minutes ago ago

      One application would be safety and security critical real-time systems that also need significant amount of processing power

    • qubex 10 hours ago ago

      That’s a rather luridly practical view that’s entirely out of sync with academia and basic research that provides tangible benefits much further down the line.

    • kragen 9 hours ago ago

      Those are applications, not operating systems. With occasional exceptions, you can run any application on any operating system.

      • mmooss an hour ago ago

        That begs the point: Each application will often run better on some OSes than on others. For example, high traffic websites usually aren't run on Windows 11.

    • charlycst 10 hours ago ago

      There is an example of interface in the docs: https://lionsos.org/docs/examples/kitty/

    • vrighter 25 minutes ago ago

      no operating system does. That's application software you're thinking of. So no, it can't. But neither can windows, linux, macos, solaris, templeOS or any others

    • kjs3 7 hours ago ago

      Could have been done for fun. You wouldn't understand.

    • fortyseven 9 hours ago ago

      Yeah, Linus, what's the point?

      • lmm 26 minutes ago ago

        Hardly a fair comparison. Linus wanted an OS that would run on his own PC and let him do his Unix homework assignments.

  • gethly 9 hours ago ago

    Oh no, it's written in C and not Rust. The blasphemy!

    • aloha2436 8 hours ago ago

      I'm trying to picture in my mind a person who is a fan of Rust and somehow against an OS with a formally-verified kernel no matter the language. I'm not having much success.

      • fooker 7 hours ago ago

        I see you have not met a lot of Rust activists.

        • aloha2436 7 hours ago ago

          Certainly I don't seem to run into as many of them as I'm led to believe exists.

        • pppppiiiiiuuuuu 6 hours ago ago

          It's funny how people always allude to fanatical Rust developers in the most tangential threads, but they never actually turn up and demand we rewrite the entire Kernel in Rust or whatever terrible takes they're alleged to have.

    • lovidico 4 hours ago ago

      Rust is supported by the [seL4 Microkit](https://docs.sel4.systems/projects/rust/), which is the core framework enabling LionsOS. LionsOS can currently run components written in Rust, and there are some WIP drivers written in Rust in the seL4 Device Development framework (judging from pull requests).

    • kjs3 6 hours ago ago

      At least someone hasn't complained about it being 'unix like', always without defining what the non-unix-like OS they want would look like, or where the software to run on it would come from.

    • snvzz 8 hours ago ago

      Rust, an immature language with fluidly evolving specification / reference implementation, is not suitable for high assurance nor formal verification.

      • steveklabnik 6 hours ago ago

        … except that Rust’s compiler has been qualified for several safety critical standards, with more to come, and has several formal verification tools as well. Amazon even has placed bounties (and paid some) for proving things about the standard library.

        Rust is not as immature or evolving in the ways you imply.